A accomplished analytical view of Iran within the final twenty years, protecting the advance of theocratic govt, hindrances to democratization and hardliners' overseas coverage and local ambitions

Written by way of the writer of The Turban for the Crown

A new conception of the progressive method and post-revolutionary reconstruction urged by way of the Iranian case

For many americans, Iran is our most threatening enemy--part of George W. Bush's "axis of evil" even earlier than the looks of Ahmadinejad. yet what's the truth? How did Ahmadinejad upward thrust to strength, and what kind of strength does he particularly have? What are the probabilities of normalizing family members with Iran?

In After Khomeini, Saïd Amir Arjomand paints a refined and perceptive portrait of up to date Iran. This paintings, a sequel to Arjomand's acclaimed The Turban for the Crown, examines Iran lower than the successors of Ayatollah Khomeini as much as the current day. He starts, because the Islamic Republic did, with Khomeini, providing an excellent tablet biography of the guy who masterminded the revolution that overthrew the Shah. Arjomand attracts transparent differences among the moderates of the preliminary word of the revolution, radicals, pragmatists, and hardliners, the latter most sensible exemplified via Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Taking a chronological and thematic strategy, he lines the emergence and consolidation of the current process of collective rule by means of clerical councils and the peaceable transition to twin management via the ayatollah because the splendid consultant and the subordinate president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He explains the inner political quarrels between Khomeini's heirs as a fight over his innovative legacy. And he outlines how the ruling clerical elite and the nation's defense forces are interdependent politically and economically, speculating at the power destiny function of the innovative Guards. Bringing the paintings as much as present political occasions, Arjomand analyzes Iran's overseas coverage besides, together with the influence of the autumn of Communism on Iran and Ahmadinejad's nuclear policy.

Few international locations loom better in American overseas family members than Iran. during this wealthy and insightful account, a professional on Iranian society and politics untangles the complexities of a country nonetheless driving the turbulent wake of 1 of history's nice revolutions.

What's jihad? Does it suggest violence, as many non-Muslims imagine? Or does it suggest peace, as a few Muslims insist? simply because jihad is heavily linked to the early unfold of Islam, present day debate in regards to the beginning and which means of jihad is not anything under a fight over Islam itself. In Jihad in Islamic historical past, Michael Bonner offers the 1st learn in English that specializes in the early historical past of jihad, laying off much-needed mild at the newest controversies over jihad.

Tamimi introduces the concept of Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, the well known Islamist political activist who heads Tunisia's so much important--albeit banned--Islamist political competition to the present authoritarian regime of Zine Abidine Ben Ali. Ghannouchi is the chief of a college in smooth Islamic political proposal that advocates democracy and pluralism.

Gene W. Heck explores the function of Islam in precipitating Europe's 12th century advertisement renaissance. identifying that Europe's medieval feudal interregnum was once mostly as a result of indigenous governmental company rules and never via shifts in foreign alternate styles, he demonstrates how Islamic financial precepts supplied the ideological rationales that empowered medieval Europe to flee its three-decade-long scan in "Dark Age economics" - within the technique, delivering the West with its archetypic instruments of capitalism.

Additional info for Answering those who altered the religion of Jesus Christ

Example text

Then God sent down this verse. ”15 Illustrated in these anecdotes is the ambivalence of the information. Either the pre-Islamic Arabs did or did not run between the two hills. Both reports certainly provide a justiﬁcation for the Muslims running between them (which, after all, is the central question for later Muslim jurists) and, at the same time, both reports provide a contrast with the pre-Islamic period. This contrast, note, can be positive or negative – either things are different from the past or they are the same.

5 His task on earth was to provide the “clear proofs” or “explanations” (Qur